Fellow

Prof. Dr. Sharmin Sultana

(Associate Fellow, 2022)

Professor Dr. Sharmin Sultana received the BSc (Hons.) and MSc (Thesis) degrees in physics with first class first positions from Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2002 (examination held in 2005) and 2003 (examination held in 2006), respectively. She has done her MSc thesis work on radioactive waste management under the supervision of late Professor Mir Md Akramuzzaman.

Professor Sultana has begun her career as a Lecturer at the Department of Physics, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, on 26 November 2006 just after completing her MSc degree. She has received a very prestigious research fellowship “European Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) Science and Innovation Award” for her PhD degree. Thus, she moved to Northern Ireland, UK on 27 September 2008 under extra-ordinary leave from the Jahangirnagar University. During her PhD work, she solved a big number of interesting problems on nonlinear wave dynamics in plasmas of different contexts. She has been awarded her PhD degree from Queen’s University Belfast, UK, on 4 July 2012 in “Nonlinear Electrostatic Excitations in Multi-Component Plasmas” under the direct supervision of Dr. Ioannis Kourakis.

Professor Sultana received a number of awards during her PhD period: 1) she received travel allowance from the Institute of Physics (IoP), UK, to participate international conferences on Plasma Physics during her PhD work; b) Dr. Sultana has been awarded the best poster prize in UNESCO ICTP Centre Poster Competition; and c) the best poster prize award in IoP Annual Plasma Physics Conference 2011 for her research work.

Professor Sultana returned Bangladesh on 23 June 2012 after completing her PhD degree, and rejoined at the same department. After her PhD and after working nearly 3.5 years as Assistant and Associate Professors at Jahangirnagar University, Professor Sultana received the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship for her post-doctoral research and she moved to the Ruhr University Bochum (Germany) to carry out her research in astrophysical Plasmas. Dr. Sultana has been promoted to Professor on 4 May 2019. It is noted that Professor Sultana has also received the Return Fellowship from Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Foundation (Bonn, Germany) just after completing her post-doctoral research (funded by the AvH Foundation) to continue her research work independently and to build up a new research group in Bangladesh. Professor Sultana participated more than 12 international conferences and seminars over the globe on Plasma Physics and presented her research work as talks and posters. She has supervised more than 20 students (MSc, MPhil, PhD) on her expertise research area. She is serving as active reviewer for many peer reviewed international journals, e.g., Physics of Plasmas, Physica Scripta, Physics Letter A, IEEE Transaction on Plasma Sci., Astrophysics & Space Sci., etc. 

Professor Sultana’s research interest includes nonlinear phenomena, mainly electrostatic (ES) and electromagnetic (EM) waves in the form of localized nonlinear wavepackets and solitary excitations (solitons), and shock structures in (a) space, astrophysical and laboratory plasmas; (b) relativistic/ultra-relativistic multi-ion plasmas; (c) strongly coupled degenerate quantum plasmas; and (d) laser produced laboratory plasmas. Professor Sultana has made a substantial contribution towards the published literature of nonlinear dynamics in different wings of plasma physics. She has already published over 70 research articles in peer-reviewed international journals. To know the quality of her research work, it is noted that the total citations of her research work already exceeded 1425 with h-index 24 and i10-index 32 (updated information can be found in Prof. Sultana’s Google Scholar Link) and her ResearchGate Score is 30.39 (updated one can be found here).